Hollywood Triplets - Layla Valentine Page 0,4

message:

Should I go for it?

The reply came back almost immediately:

Omg yes!!! But you need a better picture.

Annalise frowned. The picture she’d used on her dating app was her school picture, the one she’d had taken for the yearbook. Maybe Janette was right. It looked too formal, too buttoned-up. Maybe something a little more carefree would be better.

She pulled up the photos on her phone and began to scroll through them. Most of them were selfies, because she so infrequently had someone with her to take her picture for her.

But here was a cute one from about three months ago. She and Janette had gone to the beach, and Annalise had been wearing a royal purple bikini and a white sarong. Janette had taken a picture of her standing in the surf, her hair blowing back off her shoulders.

Annalise had to admit, she looked good in the shot.

She updated her dating profile, took another screenshot, and sent it to Janette.

Better? she wrote.

Rewrite the part about what you’re looking for, Janette wrote back. It’s not very genuine.

Annalise read over what she had written the last time she’d used the app.

Mid-thirties, in search of a guy who’s looking for a good time and no strings!

Janette was right. That definitely wasn’t what she was really looking for, and it would give guys the exact wrong impression. But did she dare to put herself out there enough to be honest about what she really wanted?

She erased what she had written and carefully typed in, Looking for my true love.

God. What a cliche that was! She nearly erased it in favor of something a little less earnest.

But in the end, she decided to leave it. She could always change what she had written later, if she wanted to, but it was the truth. And she had agreed with her sister that putting good things out into the universe was the way to go. Maybe she should ask for what she really wanted, for once, instead of assuming that she couldn’t have it.

What she couldn’t quite bring herself to do was to show Janette this final version of her profile. If her sister laughed or told her she was being silly, Annalise thought she’d be so embarrassed that she would have to call the whole thing off entirely.

Instead, she hit the buttons to save and activate her profile.

Immediately, LoveFindr took her to the album of guys who fit the age and location criteria she had been searching for—30- to 45-year-olds in Southern California. She tapped on the first image, thinking that it couldn’t hurt to look through a few of the pictures before going to bed, just for fun.

His name was Curt. According to his profile, he was 39 years old—ideal, Annalise thought—and an actor.

An actor? Seriously?

She’d been living in Hollywood long enough to know what that meant. People who said they were actors were usually professional auditioners. She wondered when the last time he had booked a real acting gig was, and what he did to make money when he wasn’t acting.

I shouldn’t be so negative, she chastised herself. At least he has a dream, and he’s willing to pursue it. Honestly, it wouldn’t kill me to be more like that.

She squinted at his picture. This was weird. It was more a silhouette than a traditional shot. She could hardly make out his eyes, the lighting was so bad.

Is he ugly? I don’t get it.

She tapped the button to see more pictures, hoping he would have some available. There were two. In one, he faced away from the camera. He was standing on the edge of a cliff—it looked like he had been hiking—looking out over the horizon. She could tell from the picture that he was well muscled, and he definitely had a good butt. But again, she couldn’t see his face.

The third picture showed him swimming in the ocean. This one had clearly been taken by someone else. But he was so far out to sea in it that there was no way to tell what he looked like.

Definitely weird.

But on the other hand… Annalise supposed she kind of got it. After all, hadn’t she put her school picture on her profile at first? It was hard to know what kind of pictures would catch people’s eye. And maybe he wanted people who looked at his profile to notice other things than his looks. Things like the fact that he was into swimming, for example.

Fair enough, she thought. I won’t write him off.

LoveFindr required